India’s strategy at the Paris Climate Change summit will be to work with emerging economies and press the developed world to concede that responsibility for cutting carbon emissions after 2020 cannot be shared equally by rich and poor nations.

Two major issues that New Delhi will focus on at the Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are failed ambitions on transferring low carbon technologies to the developing world, and the lack of support for a plan to fund mitigation and adaptation efforts.

The UN Convention on Climate Change has followed the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), reflected in the Kyoto Protocol and reinforced last year at Lima. Under this, poor countries were not required to cut emissions. India is emphasising this again, informed sources in the Ministry of Environment and Forests said, and demanding that developing nations be allowed greater room in cutting emissions beyond 2020, as they seek to eliminate poverty through fast-paced economic growth.

Low per capita emissions

The Modi government is approaching the CoP with the view that the domestic actions proposed under the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC are truly progressive. National per capita emissions are very low at 1.56 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent (about a tenth of some developed nations), and India’s share of cumulative global emissions only 3 per cent.

Given the large green cover in the country, these emissions are already accounted for in terms of absorption of greenhouse gases. One independent assessment of the INDC recently described India’s offer as exceeding its fair share.

Yet, there is a concerted attempt to bring India under pressure on the eve of the CoP, including by the United States, to paint the country as ‘obstructionist’. “This is unfair, uncalled for and deliberate,” an official said, pointing out that the UNFCCC had welcomed the INDC submitted by India.